Year-End Lists

Paste Magazine: 45 Best Books of 2017, listed as novels and nonfiction

[see also 2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2010s • 2018]

Novels

1. Sing, Unburied, Sing
   Jesmyn Ward
2. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
   Hannah Tinti
3. The Leavers
   Lisa Ko
4. Exit West
   Mohsin Hamid
5. Lincoln in the Bardo
   George Saunders
6. Home Fire
   Kamila Shamsie
7. The Lucky Ones
   Julianne Pachico
8. Pachinko
   Min Jin Lee
9. Little Fires Everywhere
   Celeste Ng
10. Oathbringer
    Brandon Sanderson
11. Class
    Francesco Pacifico
12. The Destroyers
    Christopher Bollen
13. The Power
    Naomi Alderman
14. Borne
    Jeff VanderMeer
15. The River of Kings
    Taylor Brown
16. The Golden Legend
    Nadeem Aslam
17. The Stone Sky
    N.K. Jemisin
18. The Thirst
    Jo Nesbo
19. American War
    Omar El Akkad
20. Ill Will
    Dan Chaon
21. The Essex Serpent
    Sarah Perry
22. Waking Gods
    Sylvain Neuvel
23. What We Lose
    Zinzi Clemmons
24. Universal Harvester
    John Darnielle
25. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
    Taylor Jenkins Reid

Nonfiction

1. Priestdaddy
   Patricia Lockwood
2. The Cooking Gene

   A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
   Michael Twitty
3. The Future Is History

   How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
   Masha Gessen
4. We Were Eight Years in Power

   An American Tragedy
   Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. A Disappearance in Damascus

   Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War
   Deborah Campbell
6. How to Murder Your Life
   Cat Marnell
7. Grown-Up Anger

   The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913
   Daniel Wolff
8. The Blood of Emmett Till
   Timothy B. Tyson
9. Meet Me in the Bathroom

   Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011
   Lizzy Goodman
10. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
    Hanif Abdurraqib
11. Hunger

    A Memoir of (My) Body
    Roxane Gay
12. Sunshine State
    Sarah Gerard
13. The Fear Factor

    How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between
    Abigail Marsh
14. Killers of the Flower Moon

    The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
    David Grann
15. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
    Scaachi Koul
16. The Potlikker Papers

    A Food History of the Modern South
    John T. Edge
17. Otis Redding

    An Unfinished Life
    Jonathan Gould
18. Nasty Women

    Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America
    Edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding
19. The Vanity Fair Diaries

    1983 – 1992
    Tina Brown
20. Crash Override

    How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate
    Zoe Quinn